Asian-flavored chocolate

culinary cultures — By Bob Riel on January 30, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Europe is, of course, known as the home of great chocolate. Belgium, Switzerland and France are all at or near the top of most lists of the world’s best chocolate-producing countries. On the other hand, chocolate and Asia are two words not often found in the same sentence. However, Business Week recently wrote about the growing popularity of chocolate in numerous Asian countries and at the efforts by major chocolate makers to produce new flavors to appeal to the Asian palate. Green tea chocolate, anyone?

With the European and U.S. chocolate markets pretty well saturated, big-name chocolate producers from both regions are looking for growth from China and India, two countries not known for their love of the stuff. Luckily for chocolate companies, increasingly wealthy and well-traveled Chinese and Indians are clamoring for Western products, and many now see chocolate as a luxurious, exotic indulgence…

Efforts to appeal to different tastes in sweets have prompted multinational chocolatiers to experiment with ingredients that might not fly in their home markets: ginseng, dates, red beans, and green tea, for example. One company even added chocolate to cheese—a double-yuck in East Asia—and surprisingly, the combination was a hit from Taiwan to Thailand.